


Favourite Photographs

by notebooksandlaptops



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Cats, Fluff, M/M, Pre-Serum Steve Rogers, That's it, art students, literally it's just tooth rotting fluff, photographer bucky
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-19
Updated: 2017-03-19
Packaged: 2018-10-07 18:10:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,565
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10366458
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/notebooksandlaptops/pseuds/notebooksandlaptops
Summary: The room is small; cramped in-between a thousand others like it, in-between the stench of paints and colours: the tell-tale sign of a cheap apartment block fallen an inch too close to the edge of an art college campus. It’s nothing but a home really, a bedroom that was just enough that it would do. Clothes on the floor, photographs on the ceiling, selfies on the bedside table.A HomeOrThe one where Steve takes awful selfies with Bucky's God awful cat and Bucky frames them





	

The room is small; cramped in-between a thousand others like it, in-between the stench of paints and colours: the tell-tale sign of a cheap apartment block fallen an inch too close to the edge of an art college campus.

  
At a first glance it is messy, unorganised. While each room in an apartment block housing mostly artists almost always promises interest and intrigue, there’s not that much that set’s this particular room aside from any average college students. The bed an unmade mess, the floor a haven for clothes the way the wardrobe could only dream of being, sheets of paper highlighted in stark colours laid muddled on the desk in an unorganised pile. No tell tale signs of paint: a heaven from the intense spin of dizzing colours and whirling creativity that surrounds the room on either side, above and below.

  
But that’s the first glance. If you stayed long enough to take a second, perhaps you’d find something else hidden against the walls of the room. Perhaps you’d find the pictures. Little collections of them in the oddest places. On the ceiling mostly. A mess to almost rival the floor if not for the images held within: smiling faces, wondrous landscapes, a city skyline.

  
And then there is the camera. Its position is almost that of regal importance in its seat on the bedside table. It wouldn’t take a genius to work out that the college student that inhabited this place was studied photography and spent more money than they could afford on a camera that isn’t half as good as they’d truly want. It’s simple, cliche, a stereotype for photography students the world wide.

  
Only three photos in the room are framed: each one holding a slightly different image. They’re not particularly good pictures, but they sit next to the camera on the only clean and tidy area in the room: the bedside table. The frames look vaguely expensive, the wooden kind, the kind you’d only buy if you had something important to display: a twenty dollar note instead of something you’d find at a dollar store.

  
Three photos displaying exactly this: one man. One cat.

  
The man is in each one, sharing the frame with a cat in the one displayed at the centre. He looks slightly ridiculous, nothing overly attractive although it’s clear that the man would have it in him. Floppy blonde hairs falling out of a beanie, a cheeky smirk on his face, blue eyes twinkling with mischief. They’re just selfies. Three selfies, one taken with a cat, each one seemingly out of place when compared to the photos on the ceiling: blurred as if the taker wasn’t quite sure how to operate the camera. On the man’s cheek there is the stain of red paint forgotten and neglected: a tell tale sign of any art student worth their salt.

  
The room is small; cramped in-between a thousand others like it, in-between the stench of paints and colours: the tell-tale sign of a cheap apartment block fallen an inch too close to the edge of an art college campus. It’s nothing but a home really, a bedroom that was just enough that it would do. Clothes on the floor, photographs on the ceiling, selfies on the bedside table.

  
A home.  
  
-///-  
  
Steven Grant Rogers was sat in his best friend’s cramped apartment that was two doors down from his own, curled up on the sofa, when he glanced over to see the camera not yet put away in its rightful position in the bedroom. Laid neatly on the coffee table, the black machine that made the world spin for the man who owned the apartment beckoned him like the very personification of temptation.

  
On his lap, sat his best friend’s slightly grumpy cat. A tabby who - from the look on his face - only prefered sitting in Steve’s lap slightly more than ripping his own eyes out with his claws.

  
The cat looked at Steve.

  
Steve looked at the cat.

  
The cat looked at the camera.

  
Steve looked at the camera.

  
The camera, for all intensive purposes, appeared to look back.

  
The temptation was too much to handle.  
  
-///-  
  
Steve couldn’t say, in all honestly, he’d been in Bucky’s room many times. At least, not the room at his apartment. Back in their home in Brooklyn, Steve had practically lived in Bucky’s bedroom but now they were at college things were different. They didn’t need to retreat to one room in the house to gain some form of privacy. They could get it wherever they wanted.

  
Adulthood admittedly had a few undeniable perks.

  
So Steve couldn’t say he’d been in Bucky’s room many times. He’d maybe had a glance, a first glance, but he’d never stuck around long enough for a second.  
Not until his birthday anyway.

  
He’d received multiple presents that year. A new art set, a pack of pencils, a canvas.

  
A kiss.

  
He didn’t think the kiss was something that had been planned – Bucky sure as hell looked surprised when he pulled back from Steve’s lips in confusion, as if he was altogether unsure how he ever came to be anywhere near them in the first place. It didn’t feel wrong, or weird. Just inevitable. Like they’d spent their whole lives….not waiting exactly, nor building up to it, just like they’d spent their whole lives with the idea that one day they would kiss each other and that when they did it would be nothing but fine.

  
As far as Steve was concerned, it was the best present he’d ever had the good pleasure of receiving, but now...now it felt like a dam had been broken somehow.

  
“Stevie, you alright, something wrong?” Bucky’s words were a hushed tone, his arms moving to wrap around Steve from behind, misreading Steve’s sudden pause as hesitation, “we don’t gotta do nothin’ yet, doll, if you don’t wanna. Order pizza, maybe make out a little. We got all the time in the world.”

Doll. Already Bucky had slipped into easy flirting that Steve had been privy to watching his entire life but never been privy too experiencing first hand. It felt nice, snug, right. Anyone else Steve might have hit them. Bucky was his special case, his exception to his every rule.

“Nah, Buck,” steve whispered. Embarrassingly his voice came out as almost wet sounding: the dry of watercolour paints fading away when water is spilt on the edges. “Nah, Buck, it ain’t that.”

“Is it my messy room?” Bucky was trying to tease but there was worry in his tone now. Real worry that Steve could hear: the flash of a camera just as the subject begins to move.

Steve took a few hesitant steps forward until he could pick up and carry-

“You kept these?”

Selfies with a cat taken out of mischief, a prank, a laugh, a use of a perfect piece of equipment brought to it’s lowest and simplest form.

“I framed ‘um,” a smile on Bucky’s face now. Relief. But also curiosity at why the hell it mattered so much edging at the corner of his tone. “Why? They’re just pictures of you and the cat.”

(The cat did not have a name. It was not even supposed to be here, the landlord had a rule about pets and it wasn’t exactly one that opted in favour of them. One day Steve had just walked in and found the cat here, curled up on the sofa. He hadn’t asked questions about why the fiend was in Bucky’s apartment. Bucky called him ‘cat’ and Bucky’s soft spot stretched far too far for a creature that’s personal hobbies included peeing on things and leaving deep red scratches littering Bucky’s arm)

“Blurry pictures. Awful pictures. Joke pictures. I thought you’d delete ‘um, after you found ‘um.”

The dam had broken somehow. It was like a weight. There, in these crappy pictures that Steve knew Bucky should hate - Bucky always went on about how blurriness would be totally unnecessary if everyone just used their equipment correctly - he saw exactly what he meant to Bucky.

They’d be friends their whole lives. Since kindergarten when Bucky had found Steve slumped in a puddle and had thrown himself in too without thinking much about it. They’d been friends through elementary school, middle school, high school. Every stage of Steve’s life was clouded with Bucky’s grin, Bucky’s words, Bucky’s camera and now - now finally - Bucky’s kiss.

All the pieces were just falling together; like painting a picture and watching as the lines and colours turned from nothing but squiggles and dots to something real and vibrant on the page.

Bucky’s larger hand reached over and lightly pulled the frame from Steve’s hand and set it down on the beside table, the other coming to cup Steve’s cheek, stroke the skin there, breathe him in.

This was it: their picture, their lives and now the colours all filled in too.

“They’re my favourite photographs.”

-///-

There are many ways to say ‘I love you’ and many ways it has been said. Reworded. Spoken. In the small room; cramped in-between a thousand others like it, in-between the stench of paints and colours: the tell-tale sign of a cheap apartment block fallen an inch too close to the edge of an art college campus, I love you was reworded again:

“They’re my favourite photographs”

_I love you._

**Author's Note:**

> What even is this load of fluff that you've just read? Don't ask me. It's been sat on my computer for a while and even I know it's too sappy for words, but here I am, posting it anyway.


End file.
